Christine Forrester's Learner Analysis Blog # 2

The three chapters that I have read in our textbook, The Essentials of Instructional Design, are so relevant to what I do every day in my classroom, on my team, and in the professional learning community I am a part of at Bel Air Middle School. I am continually doing needs analysis in an informal manner. Needs analysis can be as simple as evaluating student responses to a drill or closure activity. Analyzing pre and post test scores also forces me to conduct a needs analysis for my students.
As I read chapter 6, on task analysis, It became apparent that this part of the ID process is a crucial part of the instructional planning I do for every unit and every lesson I teach. Again, I do not do a formal task analysis, using one of the defined models in chapter 6, but I do determine the type of content and skills that need to be included in my instruction.

Analyzing learners is also something that any teacher does, but to be truthful I am still trying to digest what I read in chapter 7. I never really gave any thought to analyzing the learners in my classroom - I always assumed that they are who they are and I need to figure out how best to teach them. When I really think about learner analysis as it applies to my job, I think that analysis of individual learners that I teach occurs on my team during team meetings with my team mates, special educators, administration, and guidance counselors. We have the opportunity, once a week, to examine the human needs of our students as they are outlined in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. My team is also given the opportunity two-three times a week to examine the academic needs of our students. When I sit down to do my weekly planning, I am unconsciously using parts of some of the models outlined in chapter 7; such as step three in Mager's Approach, and all of the steps as they are written in Heinich, Molenda, Russell, and Smaldino's Approach.

I am not sure that I have ever really given "real" conscious thought to needs, task, or learner analysis and I don't ever recall formally learning about the various approches to these steps of the ID process. I am a approaching this class, what I am learning, and the semester project lightly. I am not too sure how to apply all of this new information and hope that by working in class with Dr. Lohnes and my project group that I can somehow sort through all of this new information and then choose the best approaches to use with my project. All I know is that I am going to need a lot of guidance while working on my instructional design project this semester.